The need for registered guidance counselors falls far behind the required number of professionals to cater the institutions obliged to hire them. Unfortunately, due to lack of registered guidance counselors, schools were forced to hire unlicensed counselors. In an article published by Valdez (2018) in news.abs-cn.com, under the provisions of the staffing in the Department of Education, the ratio must be 1:500 which means for every 500 students is 1 guidance counselor. If this will be applied in the present time, 46, 959 Registered Guidance Counselors (RGCs) are needed to cater to the counseling needs of students both in the public and private sector. Unfortunately, there are only 3,220 RGC's as of July 2017 which means there are 43,739 needed to suffice the needs of the students in basic education alone. Due to this issue, teachers fill in to perform the duties of a counselor. However, this is contradictory to Article 4, Section 27 of the Guidance and Counseling Act of 2004 which states that:

“No person shall (a) engage in the practice of guidance and counseling without a valid Certificate of Registration and the valid Professional Identification Card or a special permit; (b) make representations to the public or to third person as a licensed Guidance Counselor during the time that the licensed has been revoked or suspended, and, (c) allow anybody to use his/her license as guidance counselor to enable such unqualified individual to engage in the practice of guidance and counseling."

To go around the law, school heads give their assigned guidance counselors titles as "guidance teacher" or "school guidance leader". This has become a trend to all schools that lacks RGCs and this is the reason behind why there are teachers performing the roles of a counselor.